Tracing Manuscripts in Time and Space through Paratexts Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM Studies in Manuscript Cultures Edited by Michael Friedrich Harunaga Isaacson Jörg B. Quenzer Volume 7 Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM Tracing Manuscripts in Time and Space through Paratexts Edited by Giovanni Ciotti and Hang Lin Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM ISBN 978-3-11-047314-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-047901-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047753-5 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Giovanni Ciotti, Hang Lin, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. The book is published with open access at degruyter.com. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM Contents Preface | VII Darya Ogorodnikova Exploring Paratexts in Old Mande Manuscripts | 1 Apiradee Techasiriwan Locating Tai Lü and Tai Khün Manuscripts in Space and Time through Colophons | 35 Giovanni Ciotti and Marco Franceschini Certain Times in Uncertain Places: A Study on Scribal Colophons of Manuscripts Written in Tamil and Tamilian Grantha Scripts | 59 Hang Lin Looking Inside the Cover: Reconstructing Space and Time in Some Donglin Manuscripts | 131 Max Jakob Fölster ‘Traces in Red’: Chinese Book Collectors’ Seals as a Means to Track the Transmission History of a Manuscript | 161 Kristina Nikolovska ‘When the living envied the dead’: Church Slavonic Paratexts and the Apocalyptic Framework of Monk Isaija’s Colophon (1371) | 185 Vito Lorusso Locating Greek Manuscripts through Paratexts: Examples from the Library of Cardinal Bessarion and other Manuscript Collections | 223 Stéphane Ancel Travelling Books: Changes of Ownership and Location in Ethiopian Manuscript Culture | 269 Indexes | 301 Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:09 PM Preface This volume attempts to investigate manuscripts from a well-defined perspective, namely that of paratextual studies. The term paratext was coined by Gérard Genette in his work Seuils (1987) in order to engage with an open category found in modern printed books in Western societies, including titles, prefaces, introductions, foot- notes, and also certain illustrations and decorations.1 In the years since Genette’s theoretical exercise, literary theory has extensively studied paratexts and explored further paratexts which were not accounted for in Seuils, such as subscriptions and glossaries.2 Furthermore, the concept of paratext has been then applied not only to printed books – although the majority of secondary literature focuses on this topic – but also to other fields within media studies, such as manuscripts, orality, films and television, and even digital media.3 The recent years have witnessed the emer- gence of some pioneering studies which adopt the paratextual approach to engage with manuscripts.4 It should be said, however, that the number of such studies is rather limited and most of them do not embrace a cross-cultural perspective. This volume is an attempt to fill this gap, at least in part. The study of paratexts helps reveal the numerous ways in which texts are instantiated in manuscripts by tracing the temporal and spatial coordinates of these objects, each of which is a unique artefact. In this respect, we move beyond the idea that a paratext is just a “threshold” – according to Genette's seminal defi- nition – that introduces readers to texts, along the guidelines traced by their au- thors and editors. In our view, paratexts pertain not just to texts but also to their carriers – in our case, manuscripts. As emerged from the research carried out by “Project Area A: Paratexts” of the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 – Manuskriptkul- turen in Asien, Afrika und Europa (University of Hamburg), paratexts have at least three main functions, namely (1) structuring (e.g. offering navigation aids that guide the reader, such as tables of contents), (2) commenting (e.g. glosses and an- notations that offer interpretations and explanations of a text), and (3) document- ing. The latter category is at the centre of the contributions found in this volume. Various aspects of manuscripts in their social environments are reflected both in the texts they contain and in their materiality, as well as in their paratexts, || 1 Genette 1987. Translated into English as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, 1997. 2 See, for instance, Watson 2010. 3 See, among others, Den Hollander/Schmid/Smelik 2003; Kreimeier/Stanitzek 2004; Lutz 2006; Böhnke 2007; McNamee 2007; von Ammon/Vögel 2008; Smith/Wilson 2011; Birke/Christ 2013; Desrochers/Apollon 2014. 4 See, for instance, Gameson 2002; Buzi 2005; Reynhout 2006; Görke/Hirschler 2011. Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:10 PM VIII | Preface which can be seen as the intersection between texts and materiality. In their capac- ity as texts in their own right, paratexts mirror the activities of everyone involved in the production, transmission, dissemination and reception of the manuscript and its content: authors, editors, scribes, artisans, commentators, readers, sellers, own- ers and so on. In particular, the various types and layers of paratexts document the temporal and spatial dimensions of the process of production and transmission of manuscripts. Time and space are universal categories to which each object or per- son is linked, and paratexts translate into texts – in other words, they give voice to the history of every single manuscript. Broadly speaking, paratexts can be divided into two sub-categories. The first provides explicit temporal and spatial information; this is the case for colophons, prefaces, postfaces, etc., in which the date and place of production are usually recorded. The second sub-category, on the other hand, contains non-explicit in- formation that can only be accessed by means of philological, palaeographical, codicological and material-based investigation; glosses may be written in a lan- guage or register which is peculiar to a specific region and moment in time, for example. Paratexts are ‘settings’ for the textualisation both of historical events and, at times, of the intimate impulses and emotions of individual people. In certain manuscripts paratexts depict a more vivid picture of the historical role of manu- scripts as real objects in the hands of real people; it is there that opinions, feel- ings, inclinations, etc. of the individuals involved in the production and trans- mission of manuscripts can find their textual transposition. It is with these considerations in mind that we invite our readers to cross the ‘threshold’ of this volume, which introduces them to several manuscript cultures spanning three continents (Asia, Africa and Europe) and one millennium (from the tenth to the twentieth century). Some of the articles venture into uncharted territory, since there are still many manuscript cultures (or sub-areas of manuscript cultures) where works on para- texts have yet to be written. This is particularly true for many Asian and African cultures. Moving beyond earlier work on Old Mande manuscripts from West Africa, Darya Ogorodnikova’s analysis of colophons and glosses written in Arabic and sev- eral vernaculars demonstrates how their authorship, sponsorship, provenance and transmission can be reconstructed through various kinds of temporal and spatial information contained in paratextual components. This type of information is often only available in part and is therefore of limited use for exact identification of time and space with regard to the manuscripts. Nevertheless, it furnishes modern schol- ars with new ways of re-establishing the history of the manuscripts and rectifying Unauthenticated Download Date | 1/25/17 9:10 PM Preface | IX any previously erroneous classifications. As the first study ever to probe into the paratextual features of this corpus of manuscripts, it also points out the current limitations which apply to the study of Old Mande manuscripts as well as outlin- ing its future prospects. Various colophons in a selected corpus of Tai Lü and Tai Khün manuscripts produced in northern Laos, southwestern Yunnan and eastern Myanmar are the main focus of Apiradee Techasiriwan’s enquiry. As she demonstrates with de- tailed examples, the majority of colophons exhibit a refined system of dating and reveal the names of the scribes, donors and sponsors and in many cases the names of the places where the manuscripts were produced and kept as well. By investigating the paper, ink, layout and the different sets of scripts used in the manuscripts, she seeks to find out how combining paratextual and non-paratex- tual elements provides a viable way of dating and locating the production of the manuscripts and tracing their transmission. Giovanni Ciotti and Marco Franceschini present a pioneering study on colo- phons found in manuscripts from Tamil Nadu. They focus on the temporal ele- ments, producing a thorough description of both the syntax